That John Bell

There's a fine line between fishing and just standing on the shore like an idiot.

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I’ve seen a rash of this image and link being shared on Facebook, and I thought it would be an interesting example of Survivorship Bias.

Survivorship Bias is the theory that your perception is based on the viewpoints you see — the things that survive.

You Are Not So Smart discusses this using an example from World War II. The blog post shares a story about how they were trying to make the bombers safer while flying their planes, planes would return with bullet holes in them.

Naturally, you would reinforce the areas where you see the bullet holes having penetrated the plane.

This is Survivorship Bias, your data is based solely on the planes that returned.

Instead, they decided to reinforce the areas where they did NOT see bullet holes, under the assumption that those areas were weaker – because the damage they were able to see, were on people that made it back successfully.

They were right.

This post about the “Color Oracle” will share the same principle.

You’ll notice virtually everyone who shares this on their timeline, will tell you how accurate it is.

How incredible it is that it was so correct.

You could be easily lead to believe that this is right, and even interpret your results to try and make it ‘more correct’ because you are in the belief that it is supposed to work.

The reality, beyond the fact that these are general qualities that most people can relate to, is that most people who do not see it as accurate, see it as average. They do not share it.

The people who find themselves with a complete match, are shocked, amazed, and want to tell everyone.. wow.. it works! How amazing!

Every person I have seen share this has boasted it’s accuracy, based on that exposure it would seem as though it has a 100% Success rate.

But does it? Who knows, really, exactly how many people it actually works with.. for me it was about 70% accurate I felt..

It could be as low as 0.0001% Accurate.. it could be so incredibly inaccurate that it’s creator is shamed from the psychological community.

But from an outside perspective, when all we see are the survivors, we can easily believe it is right 100% of the time.

Using this idea, you take a person and they do a simple task, then pass it on to the next person to do their simple task.

He came up with the idea of interchangeable parts, creating a piece that can be recreated en masse and then assembled.

With this also came interchangeable people.

When someone called in sick, you had to shut down the whole factory because nobody could do his job.

With the assembly line and interchangeable parts, you can just put someone else in their place, tell them that when they get a piece, you put in this screw, turn it, then pass it to the next person.

The US Education system was born out of a need for workers to assemble.

Ever since you were three years old, you are being indoctrinated into a ‘do what you’re told’ way of thinking. Do what I say, or you will get punished.

This triggers our most primative part of our brain, our amygdala.

If I don’t go to my job today, I will get fired, If I get fired I’ll lose my housing, I won’t be able to eat, and I will die.

If I do not do what I’m told, I will lose my job.

If I lose my job, I will die.

I will do what I’m told.

This sort of indoctrination is perfectly inline with our natural instincts of survival.

So every day, thousands of people got their lunch pails, marched down to the Ford plant, and turned their screw.

The dialogue was simple, all you had to do was find a job and you were set.

The dialog then slowly shifted. Higher education became accessible and at the time very affordable. Now all you have to do is go to school, and then you’re set for life.

Then one day in 2008, 20,000 people woke up, went to work, and there job was gone.

They had been lied to. They weren’t “set.” The system, had broken down.

So what did these people do? They had been told their entire lives that all they had to do was go to school and get a good job and everything would be fine, that it would be stable.

But this, is not stability.

They had been trained since the age of three to follow directions, but now nobody was giving them directions. What do they do?

The Global recession of 2008 wasn’t a recession, it was the start of a renaissance.

The industrial age is dead.

If you go to a job every day, and your job is to complete a task, to go down a list and check the little boxes, then you are a replaceable part, you’re interchangeable, and your boss is this very second trying to find a way that they can plug someone else, or a computer, in your spot, to do it for less.

Payroll is the easiest way for a company to save money (increase profits) so they are always going to try and cut it, they are always going to be looking for someone less expensive that they can put in your place.

We’re in interesting times right now because people are slowly one by one discovering that it just doesn’t work anymore. They’re being trained by this same system that creates people who check boxes on a list. They’re told to go to school, get educated, learn a “skill” and everything will be fine.

Well it’s not fine, they’ve already replaced you.

The world doesn’t need any people who can complete a list, we have plenty of those, and thankfully we can have computers do those meanial mindless activities for us.

What the world needs is people who can solve a problem, people who can bring people together.